CHICAGO — Darcy Kuemper is doing his best to strengthen the Kings’ playoff position.
Kuemper made 17 saves and Trevor Moore, Alex Turcotte and Joel Edmundson scored to lead the Kings to a 3-1 victory over the struggling Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday night, their sixth win in the past seven games.
Kuemper has surrendered just five goals in his last six games (two shutouts), after a 10-game run in which he allowed 31.
The Kings (37-21-9, 83 points) are in third place in the Pacific Division, two points behind second-place Edmonton but with two games in hand in their race for home-ice advantage in another potential first-round playoff series.
“I thought it was a really mature win because two goals early, and then that’s it until the empty net (goal late in the game),” Kuemper told NHL.com. “We didn’t change the way we were playing, made sure we were defending hard all game. That’s a big road win for us.”
Connor Bedard scored for the second straight game (his 19th goal of the season) and Spencer Knight made 30 saves for the Blackhawks (20-40-9, 49 points), who have lost a season-high six in a row (0-5-1). Chicago has been outscored 25-9 during its slide.
The Kings outshot Chicago 19-7 in a dominant first period and took a 2-0 lead on goals by Moore and Turcotte 59 seconds apart.
The Kings opened the scoring at 8:45 of the first when Moore brought the puck into the Chicago zone before pulling up above the right circle. He skated into the high slot and banked his screened shot off the inside of the left post for his 14th goal of the season.
The Kings doubled their lead less than a minute later, when Vladislav Gavrikov took a shot from above the left circle and along the wall and Turcotte deflected it into the net. Turcotte’s eighth goal of the season snapped a 24-game drought. He hadn’t scored since getting a pair in a 5-1 win in Vancouver on Jan. 16.
“The ‘D’ were doing a great job getting the puck to the net,” Turcotte told NHL.com. “I knew (Gavrikov) was shooting, kind of scoped (it) out, got a stick on it. Yeah, good bounce. Right place, right time.”
Chicago went on its second power play of the game when Gavrikov was called for interference on Teuvo Teravainen, and the Blackhawks scored during the man-advantage to cut their deficit to 2-1 at 10:50 of the second period.
Knight made a save on a short-handed chance by Drew Doughty, leading to a rush the other way. Tyler Bertuzzi carried the puck into the Kings’ zone and dropped a pass for Teravainen, who sent the puck to Bertuzzi on the right side of the net. Bertuzzi fed the puck to Bedard for a one-timer from the right circle.
Kuemper made a point-blank pad save on Lukas Reichel’s one-timer 2:45 into the third to keep the Kings ahead.
The Blackhawks pulled Knight for the extra skater, but Edmundson fired from deep in the Kings’ zone and scored into the empty net to extend the lead to 3-1 with 19 seconds remaining to ice the victory.
“I would like to have got three or four, make it a little bit easier, but we hung in there,” Kings coach Jim Hiller told NHL.com. “First period was good. If you go back to the first period the last time we played here (a 5-1 loss on March 3), we had way more quality chances in that period and came up with (one). So it was nice to see a couple go in. I think that was really important. If we would have come out of there without any after playing that well again, it would have been hard for us. So it was just good to see the puck go in.”
The Kings salvaged a win in their final game this season against the Blackhawks after losing 4-3 in a shootout on Nov. 2 at Crypto.com Arena and losing a game in Chicago earlier this month.
“Obviously these can be challenging games,” Kuemper told NHL.com. “They’ve given us some trouble this year. They got a lot of skill, and they kind of wait for you to make mistakes. You’ve got to be patient. Their goalie was making a lot of saves, so you’ve got to stay patient offensively and not take too many chances because that’s what they’re waiting for.
“We definitely owed these guys. They’ve given us trouble, so we wanted to come out and give them our best tonight.”
UP NEXT
The Kings host Carolina on Saturday at 1 p.m.
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